Narallah vows to send more drones to Israel

Published October 11th, 2012 - 20:21 GMT

The spy drone shot down last Saturday in Israel belongs to Hizbullah.

The spy drone shot down last Saturday in Israel belongs to Hizbullah. The secretary general of the Lebanese group Hassan Nasrallah claimed the operation on Thursday, confirming the accusations made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In a televised speech, Nasrallah hailed the technological performance by his men. Nasrallah declined to provide technical details about the operation, claiming that the unmanned aircraft, dubbed Ayyoub is Iranian-made, assembled by the Shiite group's fighters. The drone was launched from Lebanese territory, flew over the Mediterranean before entering the Israeli airspace. It flew above sensitive targets, approaching the Dimona nuclear plant before being located and destroyed.

Nasrallah claimed this violation of Israel's airspace comes in response to 20,864 Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace since the entry into force of Resolution 1701 (August 2006). But in reality, Nasrallah has other objectives through the demonstration:

It is believed that one of the goals of the this latest operation was to direct the Lebanese publich away from reports about the growing involvement of Hizbullah in the crackdown in Syria.

In this regard, Nasrallah denied that his group had fought to defend the Syrian regime. He said that Damascus has not asked for help, and that Hizbullah has yet to involve, without excluding such a scenario in the future.